The basis for education in the last millennium was “reading, writing, and arithmetic;” now it is reading, writing, and computing. Learning to program is an essential part of the education of every student, not just in the sciences and engineering, but in the arts, social sciences, and humanities, as well. Beyond direct applications, it is the first step in understanding the nature of computer science’s undeniable impact on the modern world. This course covers the first half of our book Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach (the second half is covered in our Coursera course Computer Science: Algorithms, Theory, and Machines). Our intent is to teach programming to those who need or want to learn it, in a scientific context.
Offered By
Computer Science: Programming with a Purpose
Princeton UniversityAbout this Course
Skills you will gain
- Programming Principles
- Computer Science
- Algorithms
- Java Programming
Offered by

Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
BASIC PROGRAMMING CONCEPTS
Why program? This lecture addresses that basic question. Then it describes the anatomy of your first program and the process of developing a program in Java using either virtual terminals or a program development environment, with some historical context. Most of the lecture is devoted to a thorough coverage of Java's built-in data types, with example programs for each.
CONDITIONALS AND LOOPS
The if, while, and for statements are Java's fundamental control structures. This lecture is built around short programs that use these constructs to address important computational tasks. Examples include sorting, computing the square root, factoring, and simulating a random process. The lecture concludes with a detailed example illustrating the process of debugging a program.
ARRAYS
Computing with a large sequence of values of the same type is extremely common. This lecture describes Java's built-in array data structure that supports such applications, with several examples, including shuffling a deck of cards, the coupon collector test for randomness, and random walks in a grid.
INPUT AND OUTPUT
To interact with our programs, we need mechanisms for taking information from the outside world and for presenting information to the outside world. This lecture describes several such mechanisms: for text, drawings, and animation. Detailed examples covered include fractal drawings that model natural phenomena and an animation of a ball bouncing around in the display window.
Reviews
- 5 stars84.69%
- 4 stars9.26%
- 3 stars2.10%
- 2 stars1.26%
- 1 star2.66%
TOP REVIEWS FROM COMPUTER SCIENCE: PROGRAMMING WITH A PURPOSE
Challenging but doable. Highly recommended for those with slight experience with programming; this course is not for complete beginners.
This is my first course in Coursera. If you are beginner, you should watch videos, read the booksite and the book that covering this course. It simply needs a lot of hard work !
Batalle un poco al principio, pero conforme va avanzando, las piezas se van uniendo y, con práctica, el aprendizaje es excelente.
I appreciate your work and your services. Your classes are very valuable for whom new in the world of IT is. Thank you very much dear professor!
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